Due to the importance of language it was felt that interviews would further facilitate the aims of the research. Hollway and Jefferson (2000, p.10) state,
‘face-to-face interviewing has become the most common type of qualitative research method used in order to find out about people’s experiences in context, and the meanings these hold’.
I used interviews to gain empirical data and although the research was of a comparative nature, comparing pre and post 9/11, interviews allowed me to not only compare and contrast but to do so through data which revealed meaning. Interviews compliment a phenomenological approach and ‘the strength of a phenomenological approach is that it emphasizes the richness and complexity of an individual’s lived experience and privileges agency’ (Cosgrove, 2000, p.247). Interviews allowed respondents’ agency to be privileged because respondents could relate the discourse of the ‘war on terror’ and the institutions of the state and the police to their lived experiences. Thus, through allowing respondents to inter link themes, interviews gave respondents the space to articulate their own counter discourse.
Although repeat interviews10 were conducted respondents often made references to earlier periods of their life. This was often done when respondents wanted to convey to me the differences between their past perceptions and perceptions at the time of the interview. In this way the interviews were similar to the life story method which ‘invites the subject to look back in detail across his or her entire life
10 Respondents were interviewed twice or in some cases three times, the first interview covered
107
course’ (Bryman 2004, p.322). Dupont (2008) states that qualitative studies are an improvement over more traditional quantitative research because they allow participants to tell their story in their own words and
‘according to Polanyi, the difference between a story and a report (of the kind that is often elicited in the traditional research interview) is that, in telling a story, the narrator takes responsibility for ‘making the relevance of the telling clear’ (Chase, 1995, p.2 cited in Hollway and Jefferson, 2000, p.31).
During the interviews respondents were responsible for the stories they told, this as just mentioned would involve them bringing in other periods of their life and in some cases their beliefs. For example, one respondent took an interest in numerology and therefore would talk about perceptions, experiences and identities and feel the need to relate them to numerology. I encouraged respondents to use narratives and take responsibility because this represented the merging of power and language for respondents. It has been argued that narrative interviews reveal truth and meaning at a deeper level,
‘the stories themselves are a means to understand our subjects better. While stories are obviously not producing a transparent account through which we learn truths, story-telling stays closer to actual life-events than methods that elicit explanations’ (Hollway and Jefferson, 2000, p.32)
108
and this could be because the respondents take control. A narrative structure was found to be calming, reducing the unnatural strain that an interview context creates. For example, respondents liked the fact that the questions asked were open question and therefore allowed them to explain and introduce the issues they wanted to.
Although a narrative structure facilitated the emergence of rich data through empowering respondents I also felt it necessary to empower the prospective narratives and thus the prospective data. I felt that collecting retrospective data was one way of privileging agency because through providing pre 9/11 narratives, post 9/11 narratives could be correctly interpreted. For each of the interviews, the retrospective and prospective the same interview guide was used and all respondents received the same set of questions in the same order, so flexibility and variation were minimized. However, due to the first interview covering the period 1989 – 2000 questions were asked in the past tense, whereas for the second interview questions were asked for 2001 – present day and thus in the present context. Therefore, with the state, the police and identities, the retrospective data allowed me to establish what the common perceptions and experiences were and how respondents viewed their identities. When conducting the prospective interviews where changes in perceptions, experiences and identities did exist, I was able to ask what the changes were due to and gain an understanding of the extent to which the ‘war on terror’ had led to such changes. Further, Muslims’ Islamic identities have largely been absent in the collection of in depth qualitative interview data, especially prior to 9/11 and in the context of the state and the police, therefore there was a need to understand respondents prior to 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’. For example, the data revealed how all respondents identify with their Islamic identity and this has become their primary identity since the ‘war on terror’. Had I not conducted retrospective interviews I could well have made the
109
assumption that this has always been the case and definitely would not have known the extent to which the ‘war on terror’ has impacted Muslims’ Islamic identities.
However, although using retrospective interviews / data raises the question of memory, I decided that the benefits of using retrospective interviews outweighed any reasons for not doing so. There are many research methods which involve respondents having to be retrospective. The strength of a life history type of approach is in
‘it’s unambiguous emphasis on the point of life in question and a clear commitment to the processual aspects of social life, showing how events unfold and interrelate in people’s lives’ (Bryman 2004, p.322).
It is predominantly used to relate the social context with lived experiences, for example Hood and Joyce (1999) used retrospection to investigate respondents’ changing perceptions on crime and social change in London and Sin in 2005 asked ethnic minority old people to reflect upon their experiences of racism. Research which incorporates a retrospective dimension also reveals the impact of events, for example, Westergaard et al. (1989, cited in Bryman, 2004) studied the impact of redundancy at the Sheffield steel plant on individuals. It is for this reason Thompson (2004, p.81-82) argues
‘nearly all social science, to some extent, involves memory and some of it is entirely based on long-term memory’... ‘Researchers forget that it is also important that memories contain a great deal of ‘reality’.
110
Therefore, although there are problems associated with memory I saw these problems as problems which did not invalidate the use of retrospective interviewing. It was through conducting retrospective interviews which allowed me to establish human agency, perceptions and identities prior to the ‘war on terror’ that I was able to assess the impact of the ‘war on terror’ upon respondents.
Linked to the issue of retrospective interviewing and memory is that of how as researchers we interpret the narratives conveyed to us. Hollway and Jefferson (2000, p.3) argue ‘one of the good reasons for believing what people tell us, as researchers, is a democratic one: who are we to know any better than the participants when it is, after all, their lives?’ My aim was to understand the complexities respondents revealed and furthermore to respect the transference of information and knowledge. Hollway and Jefferson (2000, p.387) have argued everyone ‘including researchers, research subjects do not necessarily know themselves fully’. Therefore, when interviewing I took respondents’ narratives as being ‘their truth’, their counter discourse. This allowed me to consider the diversity of voices which emerged and voices of intra differentiation where changes in perception, experiences and identities were the result of changing socio-political circumstances.